Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Dr. Slump and Rock Lee Join VIZ Line-Up

VIZ may not have made any splashy announcements at SakuraCon, but they've been busy enlarging their digital footprint. If you visit VIZManga.com, you'll see that VIZ has added several new titles to their eBook catalog, including Shaman King and four Arina Tanemura series: Gentleman's Alliance Cross, I'O'N, Short-Tempered Melancholic, and Full Moon. The most exciting addition to the line-up, however, is Akira Toriyama's criminally neglected Dr. Slump, quite possibly one of the funniest, most subversive kids' comics to be published in English. Here's what the awesome Shaenon Garrity has to say about it:

Dr. Slump takes place in Penguin Village, a town populated by dinosaurs, space aliens, magic foxes, superheroes, crooks, and kids. Among the residents is Senbei Norimaki, a mad inventor and constantly-frustrated horndog. Taking a break from skirt-chasing, Norimaki does one of the things instinctive to mad scientists in manga: builds himself a super-strong little robot kid'

Dr. Slump is basically a string of extremely silly episodic adventures for young readers. The humor is frequently dirty in an innocent little-kid way: there are jokes about Norimaki's lecherous behavior, chapters about Arale trying to figure out human-girl concepts like vaginas and bras, and lots and lots and LOTS of poop.

In other VIZ news, VIZAnime.com is now streaming Rock Lee & His Ninja Pals, a goofy Naruto spin-off. The series focuses on fan favorite Rock Lee, a fiercely dedicated ' and severely limited ' ninja who struggles to master the basics. The animation is done is a super-deformed style that makes Rock, Naruto, and Guy look about ten years old. (Can a 4-koma manga be far behind?) Look for new episodes on VIZAnime.com and Hulu every Tuesday.



0 comments:

Post a Comment